The BJP on Sunday released its list of 16 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, fielding Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal from Karnataka and Maharashtra respectively.
The elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats will be held on June 10. These seats are spread across 15 states and Union territories (UTs), including Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, among others.
Here is the full list of candidates:
Madhya Pradesh
Kavita Patidar
Karnataka
Nirmala Sitharaman
Jaggesh
Maharashtra
Piyush Goyal
Anil Sukhdevrao Bonde
Rajasthan
Ghanshyam Tiwari
Uttar Pradesh
Laxmikant Vajpayee
Radhamohan Aggarwal
Surendra Singh Nagar
Baburam Nishad
Darshana Singh
Sangeeta Yadav
Uttarakhand
Kalpana Saini
Bihar
Satish Chandra Dubey
Shambhu Sharan Patel
Haryana
Krishan Lal Panwar
Earlier this week, the Samajwadi Party announced its support to former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who will contest the Rajya Sabha polls as an Independent candidate. The Akhilesh Yadav-led party also announced the candidatures of party leader Javed Ali and party chief’s wife Dimple Yadav.
Eleven of the 57 seats going to polls lie in Uttar Pradesh, followed by six each in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Thirteen Rajya Sabha seats had went to polls in April this year, in which the BJP and Aam Aadmi Party bagged five seats each, LDF two seats whereas the Congress could win just one seat.
The BJP reached the 100-mark in the Upper House, becoming the first party to do so since 1988. The Rajya Sabha has 245 members, the majority mark stands at 123.
While the BJP is set to further increase its strength in the Upper House, the Congress is unlikely to make any gains in terms of seats till 2024. In Parliament, the Congress occupies only 10 per cent of the total seats—53 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha and 30 of the 250 Rajya Sabha seats.
Of the 65 Rajya Sabha seats that will fall vacant till March 2024, the Congress is almost certain to lose five of its existing upper house members while it may gain an equal number of seats. However, if the party can do well in the Gujarat assembly elections later this year, it has a chance of gaining a couple of seats from the state in August 2023.